“The Bible defines idolatry as the human tendency to elevate something in creation to the status of God. In Romans 1:25, the apostle Paul writes, “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.” Humans are inherently religious, and when they deny the Creator, they will fasten on to something within creation and elevate it to an object of worship. In practical life, people who reject God will seek some substitute emotional fulfillment: power, profit, or pleasure. In intellectual life, they will seek some substitute to play the role of the divine in their thinking – the ultimate reality, the source of everything else. Worldviews are idols of the heart (Ezekiel 14:3).”
“It is a mistake to measure spiritual maturity merely by the presence of gifts. By themselves they are an inadequate basis for a man’s lasting influence for God. They may be present and they may be valuable, but the Spirit’s object is something far greater – to form Christ in us through the working of the cross. His goal is to see Christ inwrought in believers. So it is not merely that man does certain things or speaks certain words, but that he is a certain kind of man. He himself is what he preaches. Too many want to preach without being the thing themselves, but in the long run it is what we are, and not simply what we do or say, that matters with God, and the difference lies in the formation of Christ within.”
. . . we are forever asking God to do things that He either has already done or cannot do because of our unbelief. We plead for Him to speak when He has already spoken and is at that very moment speaking. We ask Him to come when He is already Present and waiting for us to recognize Him. We beg the Holy Spirit to fill us while all the time we are preventing Him by our doubts.
“I deeply believe that to become who God calls us to be, we must move in our thinking from isolation to integration. Christianity, if true, requires this. Our great danger is to so compartmentalize our Christian lives that one area does not impact, influence or inform another, resulting in the equally tragic outcomes of fragmented lives and diminished impact for the kingdom of God.”
